


The One Where No One Proposes

by MissDavis



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Misunderstandings, Off-screen Minor Character Death, Sentimental Sherlock, Sherlock thinks he doesn't like sentiment, Wedding Rings, accidental proposal, but not like on Friends I don't think, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissDavis/pseuds/MissDavis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock inherits his parents' wedding rings.  It's ridiculous that they mean something to him. He doesn't plan to do anything with them. Sentiment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where No One Proposes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Willie_The_Plaid_Jacket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willie_The_Plaid_Jacket/gifts).



> So on tumblr willietheplaidjacket said this:
> 
>  
> 
> Okay this is extremely important. 
> 
>  
> 
> Is there a Johnlock fic out there where one of them proposes to the other accidentally like Joey did to Rachel in Friends? Like one of them finds a ring or it’s in the flat as part of a case and they happen to be on their knees when they’re looking at it and then the other walks in and sees and just says ‘yes’ immediately and it’s super awkward but super cute.
> 
>  
> 
> My first instinct is to say John’s the one with the ring and Sherlock’s saying yes, BUT IMAGINE IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. 
> 
>  
> 
> So if this fic doesn’t exist, who’s going to write it?
> 
>  
> 
> And because I had a bunch of other stuff I was supposed to be doing, I immediately sat down to write it. Except I've never seen that episode of Friends, and while I like to write bantery dialogue apparently I am incapable of doing that without writing angst first. So I am sorry, this is probably not at all what the prompt asked for, but here it is! (It has not been Brit-picked as clearly evidenced by my spelling of the word "jewelry.")

The day after his mother's funeral, Sherlock brought her jewelry box back to Baker Street. Not because he wanted anything in it, but because Mycroft was hiring a service to clear out the house with the instructions to sell anything of value and Sherlock knew Mummy would not want her jewelry sold off like that. Most of it wasn’t worth much anyway. Some of it might have had some sentimental value. The fact that Sherlock had gone to the trouble of retrieving the box for that reason was absolutely ridiculous, and he was going to hide the box away so John wouldn’t see it and know what an emotional fool he had been. Right after he sat on the bed and looked through it. 

Though in retrospect, John of course must already be aware of the fact that Sherlock had been an emotional mess for days now, even more so than he had been four years ago when his father died. Sherlock could only attribute it to his own advancing age; apparently 50-year-old men were prone to bouts of tears at funerals. During the service he had silently cried into John's hair twice; John had kept his arm around him after that, much to the chagrin of bitter old Aunt Jane, who was sitting directly behind them and apparently still did not approve of their relationship, even ten years on. The third time Sherlock put his head against John's he didn't cry but nibbled at the top of his ear, just to see if her reaction would cheer him up. It did, a bit, though he also earned himself an elbow to the ribs from John. 

Sherlock's lips quirked at the memory and then he sighed and opened the jewelry box. Three drawers popped out; the bottom two were filled with bracelets and baubles, but the top section held nothing but a trio of rings. He lifted them out and lined them up in a row on top of the duvet. His father's wedding band had dwelt in this box for four years now, and his mother's engagement and wedding rings had joined it several months ago, when she'd gone into the care home having lost so much weight that they would no longer stay on her finger. All three rings needed to be cleaned; perhaps there was still some cleaning solution downstairs in Mrs. Hudson's old flat. 

He dug through the rest of the box but didn't find anything else of interest. Mummy must've worn some of the pieces when he was small, but he couldn't picture her wearing any of them; his memory of her was full of long hair and soft jumpers but no jewelry. Maybe he'd deleted it. He should've just taken the rings and left the rest of it for the cleaning service to take care of. Then he wouldn't need to try to find a place to hide the box from John. 

Sherlock could hear him even now, moving about in the kitchen, the thump of his footfalls a bit more uneven than usual. John would blame the weather, but Sherlock knew the limp was more likely to come back when he was feeling overwhelmed, and that was on Sherlock now, wasn't it? He'd gone and let himself get maudlin yesterday and now John was paying the price with a sore leg and an unbalanced gait that was sure to make his back ache tonight. Sherlock's fault: he had to make sure not to let himself get weepy again when John was around. 

He scrubbed his face across his sleeve, trying to ascertain if he might've started crying again without realizing it. No, his sleeve stayed dry. Good. He stood up from the bed and looked around for a place to stash the jewelry box. In the dry cleaning pile: John would yell at him to take the clothes to the cleaners in a few days and Sherlock could surprise him and actually do it. He could drop the jewelry box off at the Oxfam shop at the same time. 

He was keeping the wedding rings, though, ridiculous as the idea was. He would never have any use for them and his parents were dead and gone and it was stupid to feel as if it would be disrespectful to get rid of their rings. They were nothing but fancy pieces of metal which had served their intended yet entirely symbolic purpose and were of no more use, as far as Sherlock was concerned. Yet he couldn't get rid of them; simply touching them made him think of his parents wearing the matching bands for so many years, made him remember the wedding photo that Mycroft had tucked under his arm and taken home with him yesterday. The photograph was a black and white full-body shot, his parents standing in front of an ornate staircase somewhere. You couldn't even see the rings in the picture; there was no reason holding them now should trigger such a clear memory of it. He needed to spend some time on his mind palace upkeep soon; clearly his associations were starting to break down and veer off into foolishness. 

He tucked the jewelry box under his pile of dirty shirts and then returned to the bed to pick up the rings. The engagement ring especially needed to be cleaned; the diamond setting had accumulated decades of debris. He rubbed at it with his thumb. It was a moderately expensive stone, he thought; it must've shone once, when it was new. He imagined his father down on one knee, presenting it to his mother with a nervous question, and then scoffed at the idea. He had no idea how his father had proposed to his mother. If anyone had ever told him the story he had long since forgotten it, quite deliberately, no doubt. Who was to say that he'd gotten down on one knee with this ring in his hand? It was just as likely that his father had popped the question while they were out driving in the country or baking a pie together or after a particularly energetic snogging session. Maybe she'd said yes and they'd gone afterwards and picked out the ring together. Who knew? No one, probably. No one would ever know, now. He swallowed and wondered what it would cost him to ask Mycroft if he knew the answer. 

He could hear John finishing up in the kitchen, stirring milk into two cups of tea and rinsing off the spoon. Which meant that any minute now he'd be bringing tea down the hall to Sherlock. He'd gone out of his way to cater to Sherlock these past few days; he definitely wouldn't make him come fetch his own tea. Sherlock folded all three rings into his fist and wondered what to do with them. He could put them on top of his chest of drawers; John wasn't going to find fault with him keeping the rings. John would find it perfectly acceptable to save useless personal items purely out of sentiment. That didn't mean that Sherlock wanted to admit to him that he had the urge to do so. Hence the hiding of the jewelry box and the decision to put the rings...he turned in a circle, looking for a likely spot. Too late. John was in the hall already; his steps had evened out now that he had a mission to carry the tea rather than just walking aimlessly through the flat.

His trouser pocket would have to do as a hiding place for now. He shoved his hand into his right pocket and let the rings drop, then pulled his hand out quickly, intending to sit casually on the bed when John entered the room. Only two of the rings ended up in his pocket. The third one stuck to his sweaty palm and then fell to the floor. It hit the throw rug next to the bed, bounced once and rolled. Under the bed. Of course. Sherlock knelt to retrieve it from amongst the dust bunnies and a pair of discarded socks— John's socks, he noted; for once he was not the slob. He found the ring and drew it out, flicked off a hunk of dust that had adhered to it and then closed his fist, determined not to drop it again. John was right outside the door now; Sherlock turned toward him, lifting himself to one knee and trying to hide a grimace as he did so. John was not the only one with occasional mobility problems these days; Sherlock's knees liked to act as if they were decades older than the rest of his body. 

"What are you doing down there, Sherlock?" John stood in the doorway, lifting one of the tea cups to take a small sip. 

Sherlock swallowed and then decided he didn't care if John knew how sentimental he was. They'd been together for nearly a decade; he probably knew already. He opened his hand to show John the ring he'd just rescued. It was his father's wedding band; both of his mother's rings had landed safely in his pocket.

John swallowed and coughed; Sherlock thought tea may have come out of his nose but he didn't want to point it out. "Are you all right?" he asked.

John sputtered and bent over to set both tea cups on the floor. Sherlock looked down at them and then back up at John as he crossed the room to stand in front of Sherlock. 

"Sherlock, are you serious?"

"What?" He squinted up at John, trying to decipher his question. 

The left side of John's face twitched once and then he sighed. "Stand up, you git. You know you shouldn't be down on the floor like that with your knees. " He wrapped both his hands around Sherlock's outstretched palm that still held the ring. "You know, for a second there I thought you were down on one knee with a wedding ring in your hand for a _reason_."

Sherlock got his other foot underneath him and let John pull him to standing. "What?" he said again, and then realized. "Oh. Oh, no, John, I— Wait, what? Did you want me to—?" He turned his head a bit to one side and studied John again.

John smiled and shrugged. "That would be kind of silly at our age, don't you think?"

Sherlock hesitantly returned the smile. "Yes? My parents married when they were in their twenties. This is my father's ring." He opened his hand to show John again. "That's why I have it, and I just dropped it, so—"

"Oh, of course, yes." John nodded and turned away from Sherlock, stepping across the room to retrieve the tea. "Your father's ring. Your parents were married for a really long time. Nearly sixty years, right?" He looked back over his shoulder at Sherlock for confirmation.

"Fifty-seven when my father died," Sherlock said, only slightly surprised that he knew the exact number. 

"Wow," John said. "You don't see that too often these days, do you?"

"No." Sherlock closed his hand over the ring again, thinking. He'd seen the look on John's face for those few seconds. Not only had John thought he was proposing—he'd been happy about it. Thrilled, in fact. Surprised, yes. Shocked, even. But thrilled. "I never thought you'd want to get married again," he said, testing the idea out carefully in his head even as he said the words.

"Hmm? No, no, you're right. Didn't work out too well the first time, did it?" John's smile was tight; he lifted his tea cup to his mouth, covering it.

"Liar," Sherlock said.

"Sorry, what?" John kept the cup near his face, hiding part of his expression. 

"Give me that." Sherlock grabbed the second tea cup out of John's hand and gulped it down as fast as he could; it was hot but not scalding. John stared at him until Sherlock reached for his cup, too, and then John pulled away, crossing the room to set it down on top of Sherlock's chest of drawers. Sherlock grinned at him. "You want to get married again. To me." He shook his closed fist up and down several times, feeling the ring bounce inside of it.

"What, no, Sherlock, don't—" 

"But you do." He couldn't stop grinning, now that he thought about it. "You said it would be silly at our age, but we could easily have another thirty years together, forty if we're lucky."

"If you keep off the nicotine," John muttered, and crossed his arms.

"Yes, yes." Sherlock waved his empty hand. "Insignificant. The point is, you want to get married. And I have a wedding ring in my hand."

"Yes, well it takes two rings to get married, doesn't it? And two people who want to do it."

"Well, I've got two rings," Sherlock said, slipping his hand into his pocket. "Granted, one of them is my mother's, but we can get it resized."

John narrowed his eyes. "Get it resized for you. I want the man's ring."

"Oh, do you now?" Sherlock pulled both rings out for display. "Let's see whose finger fits more closely into each ring to start with."

"Oh, you—" John launched himself across the room. Sherlock caught him as John hit his chest with both hands. Both rings went flying; Sherlock didn't care. They could find them later. He wrapped John up in his arms and buried his nose in his hair and decided sometimes sentiment and the display thereof was not a bad thing after all.


End file.
